Congress is back in town for the lame duck session, trying to tie up loose ends before the 115th Congress adjourns. While there’s plenty of speculation over what Republicans might try to force through before Democrats take over the House next January, there’s some “must-do’s” on the docket as well (no, not the 20 post offices the Senate named on Thursday). On Wednesday, the Senate passed the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018.
While the bill had been filibustered by Democrats over Republican plans to shift responsibility for overseeing ballast discharges in the Great Lakes from the EPA to the Coast Guard (an issue that was resolved, thought I’m not sure how), the final bill contains a provision vital to national security: a truly bipartisan piece of legislation called the “National Timing Resilience and Security Act of 2018.”
The provision was jointly sponsored by one of the most conservative and one of the most liberal members of the Senate, the newly re-elected Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, and Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts. It directs the Secretary of Transportation to “provide for the establishment, sustainment, and operation of a land-based, resilient, and reliable alternative timing system” similar to that provided by the Global Positioning System. The bill, if signed by the president would “ensure the availability of uncorrupted and non-degraded timing signals for military and civilian users in the event that GPS signals are corrupted, degraded, unreliable, or otherwise unavailable.”
I’ve told the story before, but once I gave a friend detailed directions to a spot we were meeting in southwest Washington, D.C., near Nationals Park. She was late, because her millennial daughter was driving; they got lost because she “goes wherever Siri tells her.”
“You’d better learn to read a map,” I said, “because when the Chinese shoot our satellites out of the sky, Siri won’t do you a lick of good.” The truth is, a scenario where we lose our GPS satellites would be much more devastating than just bunch of 30-year-olds who can’t find their way home from the Sip ‘N’ Paint.
National Security and GPS
At its most basic, GPS is able to locate you on the globe because it receives signals from satellites that are broadcasting their position and the current time. Radio signals travel at the speed of light, which is really fast, but not instantaneous. By comparing the differences in the times received from different satellites, your GPS device can figure out how far away it is from each satellite, and thus where it is.
But those timing signals are used for many other things. In the military, the most serious is our cryptography devices. The technology that allows us to communicate over the radio without anyone unauthorized knowing what we’re saying depends of the timing signals of GPS devices to stay in sync. No timing data means no synchronization, and no secure communications. Assured position, navigation, and timing is so critical to the Army that it is the focus of one of the eight cross-functional teams established last fall and now under the control of Army Futures Command.
But just as GPS became indispensable for civilian navigation, so too did the timing aspect of the system. “Currently, there is no domestic back up system to GPS, and crucial infrastructure – including gas stations, medical devices, and ATMs – could shut down and pose immediate threat to life and the economy in the United States should it be disrupted for even just a few hours,” Cruz said in a statement.
“Regrettably, this vital system could be imperiled by natural phenomenon like solar flares or coordinated attacks like jamming,” Markey added. “I’m proud this legislation includes Senator Cruz and my provision creating a backup GPS system, which will enhance the resilience and reliability of this critical infrastructure.”
The jamming and spoofing threat remains real. Last year, Russia spoofed vessels in the Black Sea to think they were as much as 25 miles from their actual positions. And this week, NATO accused Russia of jamming GPS signals during Operation Trident Juncture in Norway, billed as the largest naval exercise since the Cold War. No one has directly made the connection yet, but as the exercise was wrapping up, a Norwegian frigate struck a civilian tanker. The ship’s skipper then ran her aground intentionally to try to prevent her from sinking completely. The ship, however, may be a total loss. I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that the ship’s GPS navigation systems were compromised by Russian jamming and spoofing efforts.
It’s rare that Congress works together across party lines these days. But the GPS satellite constellation, and the services it provides, is vulnerable. A service interruption would be crippling. So take a moment to thank Cruz and Markey for collaborating to pass this legislation.
Then go brush-up on your map reading skills.
